Christie Blatchford: The web can enable freedom in dictatorships, but it can also embolden psychopaths (2024)

On the web, which is where the alleged killer variously known as Luka Magnotta and Eric Clinton Newman and Vladmir Romanov was if not born then certainly nourished, he was identified five days ago as the possible maker of the 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick video.

For the record, the video, whether it is faked or real, whether or not it is ultimately tied to the discoveries in Ottawa and Montreal of a dismembered foot (mailed to Conservative Party headquarters), a dismembered hand (caught by Canada Post) and a torso in a suitcase (discovered by a janitor) is sick-making.

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It begins with some footage of a slender young man tied to a bed; it appears he is only somewhat conscious, but his head moves.

[np-related]

What follows, or appears to follow, is the stabbing of the man on the bed with an ice pick by a black-clad male. The victim, or purported victim, is then shown with his throat slashed as the black-clad man slices his body, dismembers it (and plays with the parts), decapitates him, invites a black and white dog into the frame to feast on the corpse, and then sexually attacks it.

‘Another common complaint about the 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick offering was that the actual murder, the throat-slashing, wasn’t videoed’

Even then, well before Montreal Police issued a Canada-wide warrant for a fellow with the same names as their suspect in the gruesome body-parts-in-the-mail story and confirmed they were aware of a video that could provide evidence of the murder, days before the body parts began appearing, online sleuths were speculating that 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick was not a fake snuff film, but possibly the homemade handiwork of someone who had filmed a slaying.

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Way back then — on May 25, when the Best Gore site appears to have first posted the video – what followed on the site were 257 “thoughts” on 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick.

(I printed these off unintentionally Wednesday when I was trying to print the breathtakingly pious description of the video and indeed of the Best Gore mission statement, as it were.)

Bear in mind these folks had just watched a lengthy video of either an unspeakable crime or a very good fake of an unspeakable crime.

The first comment was about the quality of the video’s soundtrack, to wit, “whats with the s—ty music?”

What followed then was a classic web correction (the song was True Faith, by the ’80s group New Order and a rap on the knuckles to “show some respect for one of the greatest eras in music, boy”) and the usual protracted webby discussion about the merits of such music, including one person who noted cheerfully, “He almost seemed to be stabbing in time to the music at one point. It was pretty catchy.”

Several posters offered musical suggestions that would have made the video better.

Then came a discussion about blood: Why was there so little blood?

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“I’ll be honest with you,” someone responded within seven minutes. “If this wasn’t Best Gore, I would understand that people don’t get it, but how someone on a gore site doesn’t know that when a person is decapitated, they lose all their blood is tough to accept….can you connect the dots now?”

That was followed by a conversation about the impact of 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick, with much discussion about whether an earlier Best Gore hit, 3 Guys 1 Hammer, was better or worse. “I think that one desensitized me,” one person noted.

“Same here,” someone else said, “but it was still pretty top notch, my favourite kill vid to date.” The consensus appeared to be that it was the sound effects of 3 Guys 1 Hammer which rendered it better, as one poster said, “That hollow, desperate, bloody gurgling for breath. Very eerie. Same goes for any decapitation vids, really.”

Or, as another person said, “I can’t get that video out of my head, this is nothing compared to seeing the actual death.”

Another common complaint about the 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick offering was that the actual murder, the throat-slashing, wasn’t videoed.

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As someone put it, “the issue I have is you don’t see the initial set of strikes that caused the wounds in the belly after a firm cut.”

There were what U.S. lawyers would call sidebars – forays into peripheral discussions – about other gore videos, whether 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick was real or not (“it would cost a fortune to make a dice-able real doll that comes apart like that” said one, while another added, “I wouldn’t mind if it was real because…seeing videos like these makes my senses that much sharper”), the quality of Russian gore, and the sexuality of the perpetrator (“Yep, you can definitely see his penis at 5.52”).

Perhaps the most telling sidebar was about the tenderness, or not, of human buttocks: Was the rear of the victim or apparent victim fat, or was it not?

Best Gore, you may be proud to know, claims to be operated out of Canada, though hosted in the United States. Its purpose, the site says in “About Best Gore,” is to give people the truth: It “expresses the truth about the humans as a whole and the truth is not always nice.”

The web that is a force for good, which enables freedom in dictatorships and emboldens revolution, is also this web: Call it the Gore Spring.

As a friend remarked when I told him a bit about this, it’s enough to send you into the basem*nt with some tinned food, never to be seen again.

Postmedia News
cblatchford@postmedia.com

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